Additional Images

Provenance:

Images Art Gallery, Toronto, ON
Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Literature:

Harold Seidelman and James Turner, The Inuit Imagination: Arctic Myth and Sculpture (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 1993), 169.

Note:

The joy of hearing stories told by his mother and grandmother about shamanism and traditional beliefs influenced a young David Ruben Piqtoukun and has spawned images recurring throughout the artist's career. Images of flight appear throughout the oeuvres of Piqtoukun and his brother Abraham Anghik, and are said to originate in the supposed otherworldly travels of their grandfather, a reputed shaman. (1)

Of the present work, Seven Stones, published in Harold Seidelman’s and James Turner’s The Inuit Imagination: Arctic Myth and Sculpture, it has been said “The shaman’s soul is leaving his body lying within a tent ring, Seven Stones representing the bondage to the human world. The stones have been used to hold down a tent. They may be used again to surround a final resting place.” (2)

(1) Darlene Coward Wight, Between Two Worlds: David Ruben Piqtoukun (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Gallery of Art, 1996), 3.
(2), Harold Seidelman and James Turner, The Inuit Imagination: Arctic Myth and Sculpture (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1993), 203, pl. 169.